synthesis

Original post here.

I've been wanting to write something like this for awhile now, but this thread really prompted me to get moving. I feel like there are certain things that need to be clarified and concentrated into one specific place so as to clear up some common misconceptions about Marxism.

Without further ado:

1. Marxism is not asceticism. Being a Marxist does not require you to live in a dingy apartment, wear the same clothes every day, and forgo the pleasures of modern life. You're not a hypocrite if you live as well as you can while still being a Marxist, as long as you're not a boss. Plenty of people live in quasi-monastic conditions only because they don't have any other choice, and those are the conditions that Marxists seek to alleviate.
2. Marxism is not puritanism. Being a Marxist does not require you to give up things that some Maoists, for example, might call "bourgeois decadence." You can be a Marxist and still fuck as many people as you want, do as many drugs as you want, and dance every night if you want to, as long as you don't lose sight of class politics. (The fucking must be consensual, of course.) These things are only called "bourgeois decadence" because they are typically things that only the bourgeois can afford to do. Decadence should be equally available to everyone.
3. Marxism is not moralism. Being a Marxist does not mean that you oppose capitalism and exploitation and imperialism on the basis of their immorality. Morality is subjective and arbitrary and often irrational; class politics are not. Opposing these things on the basis of their immorality almost always results in a shift towards reformism as the moralist comes to believe that capitalism and exploitation and imperialism are acceptable as long as they meet his or her moral standards. He or she may even come to believe that they are the "lesser evil" when compared to the apparent immorality of revolutionary war.
4. Marxism is not altruism. Being a Marxist does not require you to abandon the concept of self-interest, so long as you keep that self-interest in the framework of class politics. Socialism is in the self-interest of every worker on the planet.
5. Marxism is not idealism. Of course, one of the core tenets of Marxism is the rejection of philosophical idealism in favor of materialism. But being a Marxist also does not require you to maintain idealism in the colloquial sense of the word, an antonym of cynicism - indeed, blind optimism and utopianism have worn many a Marxist to the bone when they are confronted with the reality of class politics. A "communist paradise" should never be the foremost objective of a Marxist; you must always concern yourself first with the necessity of establishing working class power by means of forcibly overthrowing the bourgeois state.
6. Marxism is not workerism. Being a Marxist does not require you to glorify an idealized conception of "working class culture" at the expense of genuine class politics. A Marxist should never mistake opportunism for pragmatism. Workerism, when taken to its logical conclusion, is the ultimate negation of Marxism, as it leads the Marxist to infer that workers with any form of false consciousness are beyond reproach.
7. Marxism is not culturalism. Being a Marxist does not require you to balance cultural considerations with class politics. Divorcing a culture from its material conditions, the mark of a culturalist or reactionary anthropologist, is one of the most prevalent forms of bourgeois idealism that has taken root in the modern leftist movement. The ramifications of culturalism are very similar to those of workerism; again, it consistently takes the form of apologia for false consciousness on the basis of culture. Culturalism is arguably worse than workerism, because workerism at least has some roots in historical materialism; also, there is almost always a very thin line between culturalism and outright apologia for nationalism.
8. Marxism is not Carlyleanism. Being a Marxist does not require you to lionize or demonize prominent figures from the annals of Marxist history, to divorce their theories from their actions, and to place responsibility for entire eras of political history on the backs of specific individuals without regard for context, conditions, and, ultimately, historical materialism. (Thomas Carlyle is the historian responsible for the "Great Man theory of history.")
9. Marxism is not determinism. Being a Marxist does not require you to operate under the fatalistic pretense that communism is a historical inevitability by virtue of faith alone. The pragmatic Marxist focuses on promoting the interests of the working class in the present, not content to shrug off any activity in class politics solely because the dictatorship of the proletariat and its transition into communism was prophesied by a wise man long ago. Indeed, determinism and defeatism - as used in philosophy, not as used by Lenin to mean something completely different - are two sides of the same coin, as they are both ultimately contingent on whether your mood is optimistic or pessimistic. If the faith is shaken, if the glass is half-empty, class consciousness is often the first fatality.
10. Marxism is not (blind) anti-theism. Being a Marxist does not require you to condemn each and every expression of religion, spirituality and superstition as reactionary. It is, of course, necessary to oppose reactionary expressions of religion, but to view these expressions as independent of their context in class society is an extreme rejection of historical materialism in favor of bourgeois idealism. Without class analysis, anti-theism is as useless to a Marxist as any equally radical expression of theism. Everyone knows of Marx's assertion that "[religion] is the opiate of the people," but very rarely is it acknowledged that, in its proper context, this passage was entirely sympathetic to religion; the sentences immediately preceding that statement clarify that religion is also "the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions," and that "religious suffering is [both] the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering." Reactionary expressions of religion must be challenged, but if you wish to abolish religion entirely, you must first abolish the conditions that enable it, for better or worse, to pervade the lives of almost everyone alive today.

That's all for now. As an addendum, I tried to list these in an ascending order reflecting the level of familiarity with Marxism with which each point seeks to engage. (That is, the first few are oriented towards people who may not be particularly familiar with Marxism at all, while the points at the end are directed towards people with at least a cogent understanding of Marxist theory.)

Of course, clarifications, additions, questions and rebuttals are more than welcome. This was written to function as a sticky-style post/thread here in the Learning forum, so hopefully it will prove to be a useful resource even if it does not get pinned up top. I tried to think of a good ending to this post, but I'm tired as shit right now; I'm sure I'll think of something when it's no longer relevant. So: Excelsior!